Shortly after being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship.”
Under the order, all government agencies, employees, and agents are barred from using any federal resource to “abridge the free speech of any American citizen.” The order also takes a dig at the Biden administration, accusing it of using the pretense of “misinformation” and “disinformation” to infringe on free speech rights.
“Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve,” the order claims.
This comes months after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—who attended Trump’s inauguration and made a donation to Trump’s inauguration fund—revealed that in 2021, Meta was pressured by the Biden administration to censor posts about the COVID-19 pandemic. A few weeks ago on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Zuckerberg also claimed that Biden officials screamed and cursed at Meta employees while demanding the takedown of posts that doubted the COVID-19 vaccine’s effectiveness.
Trump signs an executive order at the Capital One Arena during his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. (Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“While they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who was basically arguing against it,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “And they pushed us super hard to take down things that honestly were true.”
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Trump’s executive order instructs the Attorney General, along with the heads of executive departments and agencies, to investigate the previous administration’s activities related to the censorship of free speech and provide “recommendations for appropriate remedial actions.” While Trump’s executive order aims to restore free speech, it doesn’t address the rise of misinformation and AI-generated deepfakes plaguing social media platforms.
Meta recently announced that it’s adopting user-driven “Community Notes” as an alternative to fact-checkers to moderate fake news. The move was seemingly inspired by X/Twitter, the platform owned by Trump ally Elon Musk.
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About Jibin Joseph
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